Cameron Carpenter

Cameron Carpenter is "one of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument - He is a smasher of cultural and classical music taboos. He is technically the most accomplished organist I have ever witnessed - And most important of all, the most musical." (The Los Angeles Times) He received the Leonard Bernstein Award in 2012 and, in 2013, announced his multi-album contract signing with Sony Classical and the coming Spring 2014 launch of his international touring organ. A virtuoso composer-performer unique among keyboardists, Cameron's approach to the organ is smashing the stereotypes of organists and organ music while generating a level of acclaim, exposure, and controversy unprecedented for an organist. His repertoire - from the complete works of J. S. Bach and Cesar Franck, to his hundreds of transcriptions of non-organ works, his original compositions, and his collaborations with jazz and pop artists - is perhaps the largest and most diverse of any organist. He is the first organist ever nominated for a GRAMMYÃÂ® Award for a solo album. As a keyboard prodigy, he performed Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier at age 11 before joining the American Boychoir School in 1992 as a boy soprano. During his four years of high school studies at The North Carolina School of the Arts, he made his first studies in orchestration and orchestral composition, and transcribed for the organ more than 100 major works, including Gustav Mahler's complete Symphony No. 5. Cameron continued composing after moving to New York City in 2000 to attend The Juilliard School. While at the School he composed art songs; the symphonic poem Child of Baghdad (2003) for orchestra, chorus and Ondes Martenot; his first substantial works for solo organ; and numerous organ arrangements of piano works by Chopin, Godowsky, Grainger, Ives, Liszt, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, and others. Cameron received a Master's Degree from The Juilliard School in New York in 2006. The same year, he began his worldwide organ concert tours, giving numerous debuts at venues including Royal Albert Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Melbourne Town Hall, Tschaikowsky Hall in Moscow, Davies Hall in San Francisco and many others. Manuel Brug writes: "Carpenter is proving himself to be a clever eclecticist, who understands to entertain with much finesse, and admits with a wink that he is "annoyed by intellectual music." Cameron is one of the only performing artists to make a practice of meeting his audience in person before his performances - often spending over an hour before each concert shaking hands and signing autographs on the floor of a concert venue. With combined millions of hits on YouTube and numerous television, radio and press features including CNN The Next List, CBS Sunday Morning, BBC Radio 3, ARD, ZDF, NDR Kultur, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and many others, he is the world's most visible organist.